The US foreign policy establishment is about to undergo one of its biggest shakeups in years, as Donald Trump has pledged to both overhaul US policy abroad and eradicate the so-called ‘deep state’ by firing thousands of government workers – including those among the ranks of the US diplomatic corps.
Trump’s election victory is also likely to cause the Biden administration to step up efforts to support Ukraine before Trump can cut military aid, halt already modest efforts to contain Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza and Lebanon and will lead to a new attempt to contain the fight against Israel. burning out large parts of the American bureaucracy, including the State Department.
Trump supporters have said he will be more organized in his second term, often dubbed “Trump 2.0,” and on the day after Election Day, US media reported that Trump had already chosen Brian Hook, an aggressive State Department official during the first Trump administration. to lead the transition for U.S. diplomats.
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And yet analysts, former U.S. diplomats and foreign officials said it remains difficult to separate Trump’s fuss from his actual plans when he takes power in January. What is clear is that his priority is to overturn many of the policies put in place by his predecessor.
“I am skeptical that the transition process will have a huge impact, as the natural instinct of the new team will be to throw all of Biden’s foreign policy in the dumpster,” said a former senior diplomat.
“If you go back to 2016, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall. And you know, it doesn’t look like there was a secret plan to defeat Isis,” said Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security think tank. “Some of these things didn’t work out the way they were talked about on that campaign trail, and we’re going into this not really knowing what the president’s proposal for all of this will be — and what he will do.”
One clear priority, however, is to target many of those involved in crafting US foreign policy, as part of a broader purge of the US government.
Trump has promised to revive Schedule F, a designation that would strip tens of thousands of federal workers of their protections as public servants and instead define them as political appointees, giving Trump vast powers to fire “rogue” workers as he calls them mentioned in a speech. campaign statement.
There are concerns within the State Department that Trump could target agencies that specifically focus on issues he attacked during his re-election campaign, such as immigration. In particular, he could eliminate entire State Department bureaus, including the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM, which resettled 125,000 refugees to the US in 2022 alone), as well as the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor . which has focused on Israel’s violation of the rights of Palestinians.
Project 2025, a policy memo issued by the conservative Heritage Foundation, suggested that Trump would merely redeploy PRM to shift resources to “challenges arising from the current immigration situation until the crisis can be contained” and said it would “indefinitely curtail the number of refugees would demand”. from USRAP [United States refugee admissions program] admission of refugees”.
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But the blueprint, written by Kiron Skinner, former director of policy planning at the State Department during the first Trump administration, went further, suggesting that Trump could simply freeze the agency’s work for a complete reevaluation of its previous policies.
“Prior to the inauguration, the State Department transition team should review every aspect of the State Department’s negotiations and funding commitments,” part of the memo said. After his inauguration, Skinner wrote, the secretary of state should “order an immediate freeze on all efforts to restore unratified treaties and international agreements, the allocation of resources, foreign aid disbursements, domestic and international contracts and payments, recruitment – and implement recruitment decisions, etc.” an assessment by a political appointee.
“Everyone is bracing themselves [themselves],” said a diplomat stationed abroad. “Some [diplomats] may choose to leave before even arriving.
Trump has also promised that he will “overhaul federal departments and agencies and fire all corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.”
As Joe Biden enters his lame duck period, the administration will focus on trying to push through $6 billion in aid already approved for Ukraine, and on exerting his administration’s remaining influence to secure an unlikely ceasefire in Gaza.
At the same time, they will have to calm a nervous world waiting to see what Trump plans for his second term.
“I think they will do everything they can to make it clear that the United States must continue to help Ukraine, and that, I am sure, they will have to spend a lot of time dealing with nervous Ukrainians and nervous Europeans,” he said. Fontaine. At an upcoming G20 summit in Rio, the current administration would “try to reassure the rest of the world that many of the things they have done over the past four years will linger in the future rather than just being friendly . of undone”.
“And,” he added, “we’ll see what the response to that will be.”
